Bayard Rustin. Robert Roth

Bayard Rustin

 

 

I recently saw RUSTIN, a film about Bayard Rustin and the organizing of the 1963 March on Washington. Here is a short section from my book Health Proxy (Yuganta Press, 2007) where I write about  Bayard. 

 

The photo was taken at the book party  for Gerald Williams' poetic masterpiece Blowing Up Hitler: A Life Of Johann Georg Elser, Would-Be Assassin (Letterpress, 1986). That's Jerry on the right and Bayard on the left and me in the middle.

 

 

When I knew Igal Roodenko only passingly and Bayard Rustin not at all, I saw them kiss each other on the lips in front of the Community Church where Bayard had just given a speech. I knew immediately that my life had brought me to the right place. 
Theirs was an extraordinary generation of stunning (for a time semi-closeted) gay male leaders who had important roles in the peace and civil rights movements. They were eloquent men with sex just spilling from every pore. Where women fit in here was not so pretty or inspiring. And that would be addressed later with great anger and with not that much subtlety. 
How did Bayard and Igal get on after Bayard’s rightward shift? “We complained about Jim Peck,” Igal said laughingly. Jim Peck who had gone with them on the first Freedom Ride in 1947, was, like them, a great hero of the civil rights movement. A white freedom rider, he had been beaten to a pulp by an angry racist mob. He had an integrity and a direct, basic morality that could just bring you up short. But it seems also he could be one royal pain in the ass. 
A friend of Bayard’s once told me when speaking about Bayard’s shift, that Bayard would walk knee high in shit to bring milk into the ghetto. To do this he interacted with power. And at some point his proximity to power intoxicated him. 
He was also hideously treated by the movement for being a pleasure-seeking gay man. This included a very serious break with Martin Luther King Jr. (they later reconciled) and being disciplined by A.J. Muste. 
 
When I first saw Bayard at a demonstration he must have been in his early fifties. He was lean, beautiful and had teeth missing. Those missing teeth looked very sexy to me. Years later, when he was already deeply ensconced in the system, yet still years before we would become friends, I saw him once on a bus. He had grown quite plump, was well-manicured and had a full set of new teeth. 
When we became friends, not close friends, but more than acquaintances, he was near 70. As always he was stunning-looking. This time lean and muscular. Gerald Williams was close friends with Bayard’s lover Walter and that is how I got to meet Bayard. 
When Arnie and I gave our first reading together both Igal and Bayard came. I thought, “My God, that kiss in the street and here they are, people who now are my friends.” 
Igal and Bayard both asked us if there would be a discussion after the reading. It was my very first reading and I wanted to get it over with. Arnie was game, but I think I also didn’t want attention pulled away from us. And if Igal and Bayard spoke they would instantaneously become the center of attention. I also felt that I would be tongue-tied after the reading. In retrospect if I were less insecure it would have been something else indeed if they had spoken. As he left, Bayard said to Arnie, “Quite an experience!” 
Well into his sixties, Igal, at a Gay Pride march, with wild gray hair, huge gray beard, eyes on fire, walked by a group of men and women a number of years younger than him who were holding signs proclaiming themselves PROUD PARENTS OF GAYS. His face suddenly transformed. From village elder he became a young gay teen- ager totally delighted that his parents had come out to support him. 
The night I first met Bayard, he, Walter, Jerry and I went to dinner in an Italian restaurant near where he and Walter lived. It was owned by people who when he was young and poor would let him eat there for free. At one point Bayard leaned over and asked, “Don’t you think Midge is a better writer than Norman?” 
“I guess so,” I replied more than a little depressed by the question. Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, close friends and political colleagues of his, had been left-leaning writers in the 1960s and early 70s who later became neo-conservative spokespersons. 
Bayard had organized the 1963 March on Washington. He was one of the major theoreticians and leaders of the movement. He was a world historic figure. 
Later that night, I sat in Bayard’s living room smoking the strongest grass imaginable. I grew frightened and went to the bathroom to calm myself down. I don’t want to flip out in Bayard Rustin’s house, I kept telling myself. 
Bayard told me that I would be surprised if I knew which world leaders smoked grass. I asked jokingly if Menachem Begin was one of them. He laughed and said no. But of course there would be no way he would tell me who he had been referring to. So we just laughed. He told me a story about Begin, separate from whatever else I may feel about him, that was quite instructive. 
Bayard saw him at an international conference talking with some people. He and Begin were friends, but no matter what Bayard did he could not gain Begin’s attention. Begin looked right through him. He thought maybe he had done something to make Begin angry. But he couldn’t imagine what that might be. Later it was Begin’s turn to address the conference. Seizing the moment he apparently had been waiting for, Begin peered out at the audience from behind the podium and with a look of surprise and delight asked, “Is that, is that Bayard Rustin?” A pause. “A real friend of Israel.”